


Requiem of a Star

by GlowAmber



Series: Circle Magic; Tangled OC Backstories [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Attempted Murder, Brainwashing, Burns, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Cults, Emotional Manipulation, Exploration of a Villain, Gaslighting, Gen, Homophobia, Murder, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, So much angst, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-06-12 22:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15350268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlowAmber/pseuds/GlowAmber
Summary: Vega Crisium is cruel, sadistic, manipulative-- she will do anything for the Circle. The end will justify the means.Or; how a terrified child becomes scarier than the monsters in her closet.





	1. The Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Vega is five and is knows the depth of her shame.

The woman in the garden says that she is special and that is something she has heard before, but not in the way this woman says it. There’s a reverence to her tone and a softness to her face, her gentle smile comforting. She is almost desperate for the excitement in this woman’s blue eyes, and terrified. No one has ever thought of her in a good way, never looked at her with that sort of… warmth.

It makes her quake deep inside. It’s honestly scarier than to her than when her parents are angry with her, she at least knows what to do in those moments. Duck her head, avert her eyes, make herself smaller and apologize for existing. What does she do with this woman’s joy? She’s only going to disappoint her, she disappoints everyone. _A disgrace, a mistake,_ she hears those words echo and twist and fill her head. Her heart is pounding so loud that it fills her ears, a drumroll to everything going wrong. 

_She’s going to realize that Vega Crisium doesn’t live up to her name, there is nothing bright about her._

She can’t breathe. Her breath is coming hard and fast in small hiccups and gasps as she listens to her say how special she is, how important and wonderful. It sounds like the set up for her to fail, that’s so much on her shoulders and she is too small for the weight of her expectations. Her eyes water and she cannot see clearly, everything around her is going a little black and her fingers tingle as she goes heavy and curls inwards. Instinctively, she wants to be smaller, less noticeable; _gods, she wishes she didn’t exist. Everything would be better, everything would be nicer._

Around her, she can feel the heat of her fires flaring up, bright and blue and deadly. She can’t control it. The more upset she gets, she knows, the worse it will get. The proof of her failure, of her sins-- no wonder her family hates her so much. She hiccups and chokes on her own breath, waiting for the scolding hissed words to _“Stop it, child,”_ or _“Why do I even bother.”_

Instead, something new happens. There’s a warmth on her shoulder, and she panics for a moment, not ready for the change, she could hurt someone! She is startled and staring at the hand with long pretty fingernails on her shoulder. Blue paint-- _she hates blue._ Vega blinks back her tears and tilts her head back to stare at her, aware now how close she has gotten to her.

There is still that gentle sweet smile on her face, lined lightly with time, and Vega dares to let herself hope, for a moment, that she is not going to disappoint anymore. 

“I have a place for people like you,” and Vega’s eyes dim, afraid, because she’s heard similar things before. There are places for mistakes like her, where her parents can hide her away and pretend she never existed, but the woman continues soft and warm, “Where you will be safe and where we will show you how special you are. You could save the world, Vega, you could help people.”

She sucks in a breath, stupefied and overwhelmed, but the woman doesn’t seem like she’s lying. No one ever said she could be useful, even a little, she didn’t think it possible. The panic is subsiding and Vega sees her fires dying slow around her into just little wisps of smoke.

There are a million questions she wants to ask, so many things she wants to know and hear from her. The woman radiates confidence and faith, her touch is so solid and Vega feels anchored. No one touches her, no one talks to her, not in this way. She licks her dry lips and opens her mouth to speak, and the only thing that comes out is the softest most hoarse of whispers.

**“How can I help, Lady Esther?”**


	2. Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worst thing is disappointing her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some referenced brainwashing and abuse.

There is magic in every inch of the stone walls, hand carved and engraved, and she likes to run her fingers along the surfaces. It feels slick, she can feel the energy of their spells leaking through the smooth limestone and it makes it feel damp to her sensitive touch. Like water has been freshly poured down the face of each wall, like rain has just freshly hit it; sometimes, she can feel a fresh spill where a spell has recently been activated.

When she is not in an urgent rush to go place to place, which is usually only her on her way to bed, she can linger and hook her fingers in the carvings that hang a little higher up. They are circles upon circles with lines connecting them, inlaid with spellwork too complicated for her to understand and can only feel. Protection, safety, observation--

Vega always avoids certain circles. She can feel the heat of them as her fingers skirt near, threatening and dark, blazing and all consuming. Fire and death, those circles whisper, and she doesn’t need to understand how these spells work to know what they do. It’s a magic that’s innate to her, after all, something she can do if she loses herself in her emotions. 

She doesn’t do that, anymore. There’s a disconnect between her and her feelings, they take a moment to filter through the haze of her mind and they don’t always feel like hers. Only certain ones root, and maybe there’s something wrong with that, but she can’t fathom what.

Today, she feels sad. It spreads through her and fills her, but does not overwhelm her. Grief, sorrow, unending despair-- Vega flinches as she pulls her fingers away from the wall and hurries into her room to sit on her cot. 

The coarse fabric of her blanket is soothing in an odd way, it’s not the soft materials of her old bed. This room isn’t full of luxuries and crammed with material things like the one on the Crisium estate, it has just her little cot on the floor to curl up on. At first, it made her homesick, and now, she is grateful. 

She remembers crying for extra blankets or a pillow, sobbing and sitting restlessly in the dark with only her awful fires to comfort her. She remembers hitting walls and yelling and screaming until her throat was raw, until her fists bled. She remembers when they took a knife to her hair and burned her clothing, giving her scratchy new things with circles embroidered all over them. She remembers the unending pain when they came to her with a needle and a bowl of something black and how she screamed and screamed until she doesn’t remember anymore but waking up to her skin bleeding and scabbed in a ring around her neck.

Mostly now, she remembers the Lady coming to her in the mornings and clicking her tongue before she would scoop her up and mend her scrapes. In dulcet tones, how she would scold her and reassure her and ask her to be patient, to be grateful. Her hands would be gentle and her touch warm, and Vega was also so eager to see her, so relieved that sometimes she cried into her shoulder and clung. Sometimes, the Lady even brought her chunks of bread and bowls of water. 

She was a shining ray in the darkness of her room, and Vega misses her. 

The Lady does not visit her, not anymore, and Vega presses the heel of her palms to her eyes and tries to not sob. She said she was special, that she was important, but she is a failure. A disaster. She has let down the Lady, like she knew she would, like she was so afraid of doing so. Her magic is too wild and her body not made for it. 

“Incompatible,” she remembers an older man whispering when he thought she couldn’t hear, and then the devastating reply from the Lady. “So she is useless.” 

Her sadness threatens the fog and she feels a sob come, and the sharpness of that takes her off guard. She’s undone and overwhelmed for the first time since she arrived years ago, curling in on herself and pressing her knuckles to her mouth to stifle the sound of her crying. 

It’s even worse than at the Crisium estate, because she’s being replaced, here, not just ignored. She thinks of the little boy who was born when she first arrived, and she thinks of how he creates and shapes with awe and wonder. Magic bends to his desires when he is only three. She knows where the Lady goes now, who she gives her affections and soothing words to. Mendel. 

Mendel will be the death of her, literally. A fresh wave of terror and grief seizes her and Vega curls into a ball on her side, hugging her knees to her chest. Useless things are destroyed, and she is useless. If the Lady has no purpose for her, she will be destroyed like all the other magic things, because she is too uncontrollable and could hurt people. It’s for the best, she knows, to be ended before she can hurt anyone. 

She’s been told again and again what magic can do to people, how dangerous she is, and now that she is useless and too wild a magical thing-- Vega chokes on another sob and bites her lip til it bleeds. A few years ago, she had wanted to die on a daily basis. Now when she knows the price of living, and the elation of it, she is at war with the idea of giving up for the greater good. 

She can do more, she knows! She just wants to live, to make the Lady proud of her again, to help her achieve her goal and save the world. Vega was told she could do it, and now she so desperately wants to.

When she is cried out, she lies in silence, blank eyed, staring into the darkness and letting the fog take her mind again. It’s blissful to not feel so deeply, to let her emotions wash away from her until she just feels quiet and calm. There is still a lurking edge of panic, but it isn’t anything she can’t deal with.

Idly, she trails her fingers along the floor, enjoying the smooth texture again. 

And then, abruptly, she lunges to her feet as a thought occurs to her. She is eight but she isn’t stupid, they have taught her much about magic even if she cannot use it. The natures of it, the rules, there are laws to everything and magic is no stranger to them! How do the walls use magic if not for the laws, the spells? Laws can be written, and magic must bend to those laws.

It is late in the Circle, even though it is always dark, and she hurls herself with urgency down past everyone on the paths and weaving walkways to the library. It is cold, here, it feels like a grave she is walking into, and the bookshelves tower high above her like guardians of a crypt. Still, she squares her shoulders and starts to skim titles for what she wants.

Because of the ink collar on her neck, she knows she can alter her skin and make the patterns stay. If they can force the walls to do their bidding, she can force her body. She just… needs to make adjustments.

It will hurt, but she will do anything to be useful.


	3. First

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She bleeds as she works but the burning is worth it if she lives.

The library becomes her home at night, and she often falls asleep against the shelves with thick tomes in her lap. She doesn’t trust herself to move on until she knows the lines by heart, until she can trace them in her skin even without light. She practices and memorizes them in her every free moment, which is becoming more and more often as the old scholars turn their nose up at her uncontrolled magic. 

She hears their whispers when she walks away, she knows her time is growing short and it fuels her desperation.

Unfortunately for her, there are no needles to use. They keep them locked away in cabinets too high for her to reach and behind locks too complicated for her to pick. Now that she knows her circles, she is so close-- so she gives in and finds a sharp bit of metal that she scrapes and edges into a fine point. Her fire helps her heat the blade, she read somewhere that that will make it clean. It’s the first her ability has ever been useful, and she comforts herself with that. It is useful, and she will be useful.

Bit by bit, carefully, until the pain of a fresh cut does not make her panic and drop the blade, Vega carves the lines into herself. She doesn’t know the ink the men used on her, but her writing ink will do just as well, she thinks. She mixes it with her blood, cringes and flinches as it fills her wounds, and then binds it tight with scraps of her blanket. It is hard to sleep in the cold and with the burning pain in her arms, but it must be done.

She tells herself it is temporary, to just choke it down, to not scream. It’s imperative she doesn’t let anyone find out too soon. 

Circles are hard to draw, much harder to perfect, and near impossible to carve into one’s own skin. Vega, however, is determined and devoted. With her life on the line, her entire being, she sits night after night in the dark of her room and drags the sharp blade again and again. She only pauses to suck in deep desperate gasps of air, to steady her hand again, before she dives back into her work.

In the mornings, no one mentions how pale or dark eyed she is, how she flinches away from hands that reach for her, or asks why she wears the loose dark sleeves of her first days. She is… happy that they don’t ask, it makes her work easier, but there’s something in the fog of her mind that wonders why. Does no one care? Have they already dismissed her? The Lady doesn’t even give her a passing and the fog breaks at night, that night, and she puts the blade aside to sob into her hands.

It just strengthens her resolve, however. Everything is pushing her, and when her tears are done, she continues.

The old men who come for her one morning, with dark eyes and grim faces, tell her what she knows. “You are too dangerous,” the leader informs her, “And must be destroyed.” She is still eight, still scared and desperate, but the fog in her head is thick and something new is pushing her forward, compelling her.

When they reach for her arm to drag her forward, they come back screaming and burning and Vega feels…. Powerful. The new thing in her chest brightens and explodes as the men do, falling like cinders with terrified faces around her, burned from the inside out. She is dangerous, but she feels it, now. Her hands lift and she admires the blue flames that wrap around her fingers. 

There is no stray fire, no wild damage; just the hurt she wanted and where she wanted it. Something in the back of her head tickles at her, tells her she should feel badly, that she should cry and lament-- she has harmed people. She has killed people. The other part, the newer part, reminds her of what was necessary. She wants to live, doesn’t she?

Yes, yes she does.

She is smiling when the Lady comes to investigate, her chin lifted proudly, daringly, sat in the middle of the ash and soot with nothing staining her form. She wants to survive and here is her proof of will. She is better than them, she is more capable and--

“I’m not useless,” Vega declares, boldly, defiantly, “I can control it.”

The Lady stares at her and she cannot tell if she is surprised or scared, she is so calm in the face of Vega’s rampage. “No,” The Lady leans down, her hand finding itself on Vega’s shoulder and she sucks in a breath, waiting, and then continues to beam viciously when the Lady finishes her thought.

“No, you are not useless. You really are special, Vega, and we’re going to save the world.”

There is nothing left in her to cry anymore. Not even with joy and relief. Instead, the grin on her face just widens as the Lady leads her out of her room and steps over the corpses of her former mentors.


End file.
